Tatum reached its current peak at rank 205 in 2024, the same year as the data snapshot, with about 27,000 cumulative American girls on SSA record. The chart climb has been steady since the late 2000s, and Tatum fits a recognizable cohort of unisex surname-style names that have moved from boys'-name origins into mainstream American girls' first-name use.
An English surname
Tatum derives from an Old English personal name plus ham (meaning "settlement" or "homestead"), giving an underlying sense of "Tata's homestead." The name survives chiefly as an English surname, with the village of Tattenhall in Cheshire and several other Tatum-related place names indicating the surname's historical distribution.
The American given-name use began as a boys' name in the late 19th century. Ryan O'Neal selected Tatum for his daughter in 1963, reportedly drawing from the surname of jazz pianist Art Tatum (1909-1956). The cross-gender flip dates to that single celebrity-baby naming decision and the subsequent mainstream adoption.
The pop-culture lift
Tatum O'Neal (born 1963) became the youngest Oscar winner in Academy Award history at age ten for Paper Moon (1973). Her name's prominence through the 1970s and 1980s gave Tatum an early visible girls'-name footing, but the chart climb didn't really start until the 2000s when surname-style girls' names broadly entered fashion.
Channing Tatum (born 1980) and the Step Up film series gave the name a parallel boys'-name visibility through the 2010s, but the U.S. chart impact has been firmly on the girls' side.
The counter-reading
Worth flagging that Tatum's late-2010s and 2020s chart climb fits the same surname-style girls' name pattern as Sutton, Blakely, and Oakley. The category as a whole shows wear, and Tatum is a relatively late entrant to that wave.
Parents picking Tatum in 2025 are working with a name that will read as a 2020s pick rather than as a fresh-feeling outlier. The Tate nickname gives parents a slightly different everyday landing for families who want the shorter form. Sibling pairings on naming forums lean toward similarly surname-style picks: Tatum and Sutton, Tatum and Quinn, Tatum and Scottie. For more, browse Old English girl names. The two-syllable, soft-T opening also gives Tatum the cohort-fit with names like Quinn, Reese, and Sloane, all of which share the polished surname-style register that defined American girls' naming in the 2010s and 2020s.